Free clinics won’t cure health care problem

March 7, 2013

These clinics are an excellent aid to the health care crisis caused by the for-profit health care industry, but they are not a large-scale answer to our health care problem.

The governor supports state funding to clinics labeled free, which actually operate on a sliding scale of cash, insurance payment or no charge if the patient can prove low income or that Medicaid has turned them down due to income.

This type of clinic usually operates in close connection with a federally operated clinic that is fully free to low-income working poor who cannot receive Medicaid due to income.

One sliding scale clinic in Blair County then asks patients to buy hospital insurance for $99 a month.

I understand that these clinics must finance themselves to operate, and I look highly upon what they are trying to do to help the working poor.

These clinics, however, cannot reach as many people as Medicaid can through the Affordable Care Act.

By refusing the expansion of Medicaid through the ACA, Corbett is again favoring the corporations at the peril of the 41 percent uninsured people of Pennsylvania whom ACA would help.

The struggling working poor help to pay for Gov. Tom Corbett's and his family's health care.

So why does he refuse to return the favor by denying them Medicaid that would help them survive? Instead, he predictably chooses to prop up the profits of the private healthcare cartel.